


You have not yet learned to crawl

by threeguesses



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, First Time, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:26:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Kalinda kisses her, it isn’t entirely a surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You have not yet learned to crawl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laylapalooza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylapalooza/gifts).



> Title and headings adapted from Billy Collins' _Aristotle_.

_This is the first part_   
_The first-person narrator introduces himself,_   
_The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings._

 

The first time Kalinda kisses her, it isn’t entirely a surprise.

They’ve been building towards it for ages, the groundwork of an affair stretching as far back as Alicia can see.  Two Fridays ago, side by side reading a deposition, pressed together from shoulder to thigh.  Last week, punch drunk on an important win, Kalinda cajoling her into staying at the bar until midnight became one o’clock became two.  Yesterday, fixing Kalinda’s lipstick, motherly fussing turned into something else as her thumb lingered, just one beat too long.  Tonight in the cab, leaning into Kalinda’s shoulder, into her warm neck as she laughed and muttered about lightweights. 

(Their first meeting, Kalinda annoyed and unimpressed, rolling her dark eyes like a thirteen-year-old and Alicia charmed despite herself.)

When she looks back, stacks up the evidence, Alicia tells herself she hadn’t meant to flirt.  Not really.  It had been too long since she’d made a female friend outside of a playground, a PTA meeting, a campaign dinner.  She’d simply forgotten how.  It was easy to fall back on charm when Kalinda turned tight-lipped and acerbic, easy to smile her way to smoother waters.

(And maybe, maybe Alicia was a bit flattered.  She’d known what Donna’s compliments were meant to imply.)

So tonight, when Kalinda walks her to her door, Alicia waits, back up against the wood.  Kalinda regards her shrewdly for a moment, kisses her for two.

"You’ll regret that in the morning,” she says against Alicia’s lips.  Then she’s gone. 

 

Alicia does.  She feels embarrassed and caught out.  It comes back to her in bright, awful flashes, her hand on Kalinda’s knee and her wrist and her cheek and just _what,_ exactly, had she been thinking?

Kalinda, thankfully, looks completely unruffled at their morning meeting.  Alicia takes a stream of constant notes for something to do and tries not to actively cringe.  By the time the meeting’s over she is resolved to apologise, profusely and repeatedly, but Kalinda slips away before she can say a word.

She slips back into Alicia’s office at lunchtime, carrying a single cup of coffee. 

Alicia isn’t sure what to do with her hands or her expression.  She half-rises out of her chair then thinks better of it, a hot blush creeping up the back of her neck and butterflies in her stomach. 

 _So,_ she wants to ask, _do desperate straight women throw themselves at you all the time_?

“Um,” is what comes out of her mouth instead.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kalinda says with a half-smile.  “It happens.”  She slides the coffee towards Alicia, raps her knuckles across the desk.  She’s out of the office and walking before Alicia can so much as blink.

(Alicia wonders if she regrets it.)

 

The next week is an absolute nightmare.  Alicia vacillates between desperation and abject embarrassment, doesn’t sleep nights.  She wants everything back to normal, wants not to have damaged their dawning friendship for an ego-boost, but when Kalinda’s around it feels like she’s wearing a permanent blush.  Kalinda seems not to notice a thing.  She is cool and professional and smiles at Alicia no more and no less than usual.

(Alicia flashes back to their first week working together, Kalinda plying her with alcohol and mocking her by turns. 

 _Do you even_ like _me,_ she’d wanted to ask.)

Finally, on Thursday, she caves and practically begs Kalinda to go to their usual bar.  But after five minutes she’s still struggling for what to say, her napkin shredded to pieces.  Kalinda sips her drink like nothing in the world could bother her and watches Alicia with steady eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” Alicia finally blurts, cupping her hands around her glass, “I want to still be friends.”

“We are,” Kalinda smiles wryly.  “Although, your lack of eye contact has been giving me pause.  Among other things.”  She trails a finger through the wreckage of Alicia’s napkin. 

“I’m sorry,” Alicia repeats, dropping her head into her hand.  “I just… I feel like a complete idiot.”

“Why?” Kalinda asks calmly.  “I kissed you.”

Alicia almost jumps at the word, feels it like a physical caress.  Even though Kalinda says it in measured, everyday tones and God, _how_ is she so thrown by this? 

Kalinda notices (Kalinda notices everything).  “Easy,” she tells Alicia, but her mouth twists up.  It’s possible she’s trying not to smirk.

Alicia has to laugh at herself then.  “Okay,” she says, running a hand through her hair.

“Okay,” Kalinda agrees.  She’s smiling.

 _This is the middle,_   
_where the action suddenly reverses._   
_Here the aria rises to a pitch._

 

For awhile, things go back to normal.  They work together in Alicia’s office, grab drinks after hours.  But Kalinda doesn’t ever try to coax her into staying past midnight, doesn’t smile with quite the same edge.  Doesn’t touch Alicia.

(Not that she touched Alicia in the first place.  That was you, Alicia reminds herself, you started that.)

Nevertheless, the second time she kisses Alicia isn’t really a surprise either.

They’ve just finished dinner at a tiny dive restaurant.  It’s late – their brainstorming session with the newest client ran long, and Alicia hadn’t wanted to go home to re-microwaved leftovers.  She stands behind her chair and watches Kalinda put on her coat, fuss with her scarf. 

“Here,” she says, reaching out absently to straighten it.  Her hand brushes Kalinda’s neck and she pulls it back as if burned.

“Sorry,” she mutters hastily.  It feels as though her face is on fire.  Kalinda regards her inscrutably for a long moment.

Then she kisses her.

 

Half an hour later they are stumbling into Kalinda’s dark apartment.  Alicia’s head is spinning.  They haven’t stopped kissing once, not in the cab, not in the elevator, not all the long way down the hallway.  Fleetingly, she wonders if Kalinda was afraid she’d bolt.  

They haven’t spoken once either.  Now, inside the apartment, it’s so quiet Alicia can hear her pulse thudding in the back of her skull, the whoosh as Kalinda slides her coat off her shoulders.  There’s a sharp, ringing silence behind the soft sounds of their mouths and the steady hum of the refrigerator.  All of Alicia’s moans are choked-off and caught in her throat.

Kalinda breaks the kiss to kick off her boots.  Her eyes flash at Alicia in the dark and her mouth looks swollen. 

And, oh, Alicia _wants_ her then, so completely and sharply she can taste it, metallic on her tongue.  It makes her clumsy, limbs slow and useless as Kalinda backs her into the wall, pins her wrists.  Every touch is feels important, like necking in high school.

Suddenly, Kalinda chuffs a laugh into the silence, shaking her head against Alicia’s collarbone.

“Take off your damn heels,” she says exasperatedly. 

Alicia recovers herself, grinning.  “Oh, I’m sorry.  Too tall?”  She twists her arms, breaks Kalinda’s grip.

“Alicia,” Kalinda growls warningly, but she’s smiling. 

“No, really, I think we can make it work.”  Alicia flips them, pinning Kalinda against the wall and catching her mouth.  It’s odd, the downward angle.  She noticed it when they first started kissing and it’s sharper now, the added inches of Kalinda’s boots gone.  Her hips sway into Kalinda’s almost by accident, a leg pressing up and between.

“Fuck,” Kalinda hisses, breaking the kiss.  Her breasts press against Alicia as she arches.  “Okay,” she pants, “bedroom.  Now.” 

Everything goes fast and desperate when they stretch out on top of Kalinda’s somber bedspread.  Earnest.  They stop talking, the ringing silence back as Kalinda strips them quickly and efficiently, cold fingers steady on the buttons of Alicia’s blouse.  It’s so dark all Alicia can see is the white of her own skin and the flash of Kalinda’s teeth. 

(But she can feel Kalinda’s eyes on her face when she comes.  Watching.)

 

Afterwards, Alicia leaves almost immediately.  Kalinda calmly waves aside her anxious explanations of how late she is and walks her to the door.

“I-” Alicia pauses in the entryway.  They still haven’t turned on any lights.  In the darkness, the unfamiliar shapes of Kalinda’s hallway shift and morph at edge of her vision. 

“Discretion is the better part of valour,” Kalinda says.  Her smile is empty and neutral.  She is leaning against the doorjamb in nothing but her underwear and Alicia wants to touch her; her loose hair, her breasts, the line of her hipbone. 

“The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav’d my life,” she quotes instead.

“That too,” Kalinda says, with a shade of her old exasperation.  She kisses Alicia goodbye with open eyes and a closed mouth.

 

 _And this is the end,_   
_the car running out of road._   
_Here the stage is littered with bodies._

 

The next day at work is the same as always.  Alicia catches Kalinda’s wrist by the coffee pot and asks “Are we–” (okay, still friends, doing that again) “–good?” to which Kalinda simply smiles her Kalinda-smile in reply.  She breaks Alicia’s grip with gentle fingers and slips off down the hallway.

And that’s that, really.  One day later they’re thrown headlong into an awful, all-consuming defence.  The client killed his daughter in cold blood, is paying them through the nose to make it all go away.  Alicia interviews expert witness after expert witness, looking for the one who’ll say what they want.  Kalinda spends her days out searching for evidence of plausible doubt.  They see each other in briefings, across hallways, time for tired smiles and nods and nothing else.

(Only Alicia can’t forget.  Can’t un-see the line of Kalinda’s back, can’t stop remembering the heat of her mouth or her cold, careful hands.  Keeps hearing the quiet, gasping way she came and how she sighed afterwards, head buried in Alicia’s neck.)

Well, Alicia thinks, at least their friendship was damaged by something that meant more than an ego-boost.

(It doesn't make her feel better.) 

 

Needless to say, the next time Kalinda kisses her is a complete surprise.

 

The night before the trial begins, Alicia glances up from the autopsy photos to see Kalinda leaning in the doorframe, clutching a bottle of tequila.  She looks like Alicia feels, tired and stretched too thin. 

It’s the first time they’ve been alone together since she kissed Alicia goodbye.

“Hey,” Kalinda says quietly.  She wiggles the tequila, pushes the toe of her boot through the papers scattered across the floor.  “Thought you might need this.”

“God, Kalinda,” Alicia sighs.  She isn’t sure if this is a peace-offering for the fight they’re not having, or a come-on, or an apology, or— “What’re we supposed to drink that out of?”

“Dunno.”  Kalinda smiles ruefully.  “The bottle?”

“Huh,” Alicia says.  Kalinda’s smile slips back into blank neutrality.  She sets the bottle on the desk, makes to leave.

“Come on,” Alicia tells her, “don’t do that.”  Kalinda blinks.  Alicia wants to shake her and kiss her and sleep for a week.  “Maybe you prefer one night stands and that’s fine, but we’re _friends_ ; it would be nice if we could continue to be.”  Kalinda is looking at her as if she’s grown horns.  It’s possible she’s not articulating this well.  “I like being friends with you,” she tries again.  “It’s one of the nicer parts of my day.  And—”

Kalinda moves then, all in a rush, leaning over and kissing Alicia so hard Alicia can feel the line of her teeth through their lips.  It’s clumsy and sharp and nothing like her earlier calculated kisses.  She pulls back just as fast, off-balance and half-leaning on Alicia’s chair.

“It’s not the friendship part I’m struggling with here,” she says.  Then she’s out the door.

Alicia sits in her chair for a full minute, frozen.  When she finally gets up, it’s on unsteady legs.  She walks into the empty bullpen, pauses.  Does a full pivot back to her desk.  Picks up her phone and calls Kalinda’s cell, gets her voicemail.  Weighs the benefits of texting “get back here right now you coward.”  Decides against it.  She’s hovering uselessly in the outer hallway when the elevators ding and Kalinda’s boots click back across the marble floors.

“Forgot my bag,” she says by way of explanation, brushing past Alicia.  Her face is once more a blank mask of neutrality. 

Alicia has to admire her determination; she seems resolved to brazen this out.  Alicia also really, really has to laugh.  Which she does.  Somewhat hysterically.

“O-kay,” Kalinda says, shouldering her bag and turning on her heel. 

“No, no, no,” Alicia gasps, dragging her back by the wrist.  “You are not going anywhere.”  Kalinda looks nonplussed and mildly alarmed.  Alicia’s laughter dies.  Even now, even after, she is still not one-hundred-percent certain she’s reading this right.

“The friend gambit was my low-ball offer,” she says at last, watching Kalinda carefully.  “I skipped right over the original.” 

A myriad of emotions flit across Kalinda’s face, absolutely none of which Alicia can decipher.  “Stupid of you,” she says slowly.  “Standard bargaining rule.  Start high.”

“I’m an idiot,” Alicia agrees.  The office is bright, empty and church-quiet.  It feels like they are the only people in the world still awake.  

“Yeah,” Kalinda says finally.  Her expression is still mysterious, but the blank neutrality has been replaced by something slightly more sphinx-like.  “Okay,” she adds.  It could be a question or an agreement or an affirmation and Alicia doesn’t care either way.

“Okay,” she murmurs back.  Kalinda’s eyes are dark and fathoms deep.  They close when Alicia kisses her.

 


End file.
